Getting a lot of hits on this one... For those of you tuning in late, or who don't click my "previously" links, back in 2006 there was an earlier program of similar concept called "GLTerminal". This new "Cathode" program works a lot better, though.

For those of you on Linux (or using X11 on a Mac), you can accomplish a very similar thing by using the "apple2" module of my xscreensaver package, as detailed here (and also here and here). The underlying display module shared by the apple2, pong, m6502, and xanalogtv screen savers is actually simulating the hardware of an old CRT, rather than just doing an effect that kinda-sorta looks like it. Reading all of the comments in hacks/analogtv.c is well worth your time.

Update 2, 2012: Hey, as of release 5.19 in late 2011, the MacOS release of XScreenSaver includes stand-alone application versions of the Apple2 and Phosphor screen savers that are pre-configured to work as terminal emulators. Check them out.

It always surprises me, particularly in this case, where the variety of options is so rich, that nobody remembers what a vt100 screen actually looked like. There's a very distinct blue-grey cast that none of the color options really come close to.

VT100 is kind of missing the point. If it had a VT100 mode I'd expect to see it support ANSI, blink, bold, reverse video, underlined text, etc. An 80-column Apple II display, though, matches up exactly with the minimal, plain text output you expect to get from a typical *nix terminal program.

Another mode that would match up well, though, would be an ADM-3A appearance. There's probably a lot fewer people using Macs who would have memories (I hesitate to include the word "fond" with that) of one of those, however. More people probably came to Macs after using Apple IIs than after using ADM-3As (or VT100s, etc.).

That said, I still have an actual ADM-3A terminal in my parent's garage... It should still work even after not being turned on in two decades. Though if something's gone wrong with it I imagine it'd be pretty easy to fix, since its logic board was just a collection of discrete TTL chips. I keep meaning to ask the Computer History Museum if they need an ADM-3A, or could use an additional one.

I came to this blog after finding cathode on Andy Baio's linkblog... and I have to say this is spooky. Installing lynx, and doing a hex dump of a file are precisely the same two things I did with it as well.

Interesting to see the ever-increasing list of Mac video chippery that Cathode refuses to play with. FIrst it was the GMA 950 listed on the webpage. Then they added the X3100. Now they're working their way through a bunch of NVIDIA and ATI chips that, oh noes, it won't work on.

Seriously, how hard is it to map a bitmap to a curved surface and add effects? That's decades old. What's with the insistence on writing to OpenGL 2.0, anyway?

Oh, and they're (probably, since I can't run the thing due to OpenGL sniffiness) missing a trick. There should be an option to take input from the camera and map it as a reflection on the screen, or perhaps just the relevant part of the camera image on the part that the window occupies.